Heartless
by SilverGrayAndMauve
Summary: After being found in Mr. Schue's house, Finn's jacket is stolen a second time and taken back to where it belongs...


"Will, we have a problem."

Will Schuester looked up from the Spanish papers he was hunched over. He had just spent the majority of the evening hosting a one-day-late Thanksgiving party for all the members of the glee club, past and present, who were spending their break in Lima, and now he was working on finishing grading so he could get all his students' papers back to them when school started up again on Monday.

Across the table from him was his wife, who was standing stiff as a board and repeatedly clenching and unclenching her hands, her eyes wide and frantic.

"What's the matter?" Will asked, setting his pen down.

Emma took a deep breath. "Did you rearrange the medicine cabinet?" she asked

Will blinked, confused. "No," he drawled. "Why would I?"

"It's just that—um…" Emma swallowed. "My OCD medication is between the aspirin and the DayQuil, but it's supposed to be at the very end, next to the multivitamins. That's where I always leave it, but now it's been moved since this morning. And I don't know if you know anything about this, but I also found one of my sweaters hanging backwards in my closet just now."

Will shook his head. "No," he said. "I haven't been into the medicine cabinet today. Or your closet," he added for good measure.

This only seemed to disconcert Emma more. "Oh dear," she said, fidgeting restlessly. "That's what I was afraid of. This is bad. This is very, very bad."

Will watched with growing curiosity as she worried. "Honey, I think you're overreacting," he said. "I know you like to have everything in its proper place, but it's not that big of a deal. All you have to do is move them back."

Confusion flickered across Emma's face for just a second, and then it quickly disappeared. "This isn't about my organizational needs, Will," she said, visibly frustrated. "I'm not upset because they've been moved, I'm upset because _I_ didn't move them. And if you didn't move them, that means someone_ else_ did. Someone has been in our house and going through our things!"

Will's eyebrows knitted as he tried to make sense of that bit of information. "How?" he said finally. "We've been home all day, and we just had the house full of glee kids. _Someone_ would have seen someone come in."

"If they walked in through the front door, yes, but not if they came in through the bedroom," said Emma. "It's possible that someone broke in during the party, and no one would have seen or heard anything."

For the first time, Will registered the seriousness of the situation. If someone really had gotten into their room unnoticed and gone through their things, then they had trouble—for one reason or another.

"Is anything missing?"

"Not as far as I can tell," said Emma. "But there are several things in the wrong place—more than just the sweater and the medicine—and I _know_ I didn't move any of them."

Will stood up, his papers forgotten. "Come on," he said, leading the way back into the bedroom with a look of determination in his eye. "You check the windows," he instructed over his shoulder. "See if there's any way someone got in through one of them. I'll go through and make sure everything's still here."

"Do you really think we were robbed?" Emma asked anxiously as she trotted along at his heels.

"I don't know," said Will. "It was most likely Sue, either planting bugs so she can spy on me again, or digging for dirt to use as blackmail. Whatever the case, she can't be up to anything good."

When they reached the bedroom, Emma began examining the windows, and Will headed straight for the bed, getting down on all fours to take a good, long look underneath it. Not finding any baby monitors or any other suspicious devices, he rose again to his feet, and turned his attention to making sure all of his and Emma's valuables were accounted for. But where to start?

"Have you looked through your jewelry?" Will asked.

"Yes," Emma replied, "it's all there. I've already checked my purse, too."

Will took a look around the room for another good starting point. "How about the chest by the dresser?"

"No, I haven't looked in there yet."

His mind made up, Will crossed the room to the big oak chest in question. There wasn't much in that chest of great monetary value, but that didn't mean that its contents didn't mean a lot to Will and Emma. Besides, if blackmail was Sue's game, then he needed to make sure none of their old photo albums or home videos had been taken. Somehow Will doubted Kanye West would be as sympathetic as Olivia Newton-John if a certain tape were to be leaked onto the Internet…

Kneeling in front of the chest, Will lifted its heavy lid, pushing it back against the side of the dresser, and peered inside. The quilt Emma's grandmother had made for her was still there, though not folded with quite the level of care that it usually was. Will removed the quilt from the chest to take inventory of the rest of the heirlooms and other sentimental items they stored underneath it, and immediately noticed something wrong.

"The windows are all still locked," Emma reported, making her way over to Will's side. "And nothing's been broken. I don't know how someone could have—" she stopped when she noticed the dumbfounded look on Will's face. "What is it?" she asked.

"Finn's jacket," Will said, looking up to meet Emma's gaze. "It's gone."

Emma's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "Oh, dear," she said softly.

There was a beat of silence as Emma just stood by quietly, carefully assessing Will's expression to determine the right response. She was saved from having to come up with anything more to say when Will broke the silence himself, sighing and shaking his head.

"I can't believe her," he said. "Sue has pulled a lot of crazy stunts in her time, but this time she's gone too far. What kind of person steals a memento of someone who died from someone who cared about them?"

Emma shifted awkwardly, clearing her throat. "Well, to be fair, Will, you _did_ steal it from Santana," she said, not unkindly.

"That was different," Will said, his irritation showing. "I took it out of grief, because I wanted something to remember him by. But _this_ is completely unprecedented. Sue had _no right_ to take that jacket from me."

Emma raised her eyebrows, looking like she didn't quite agree with his assessment, but she said nothing to the contrary.

Will sighed again. "I don't get it," he said. "What would she even want with his jacket? There's gotta be a million other more Sue-like routes she could have gone if she wanted to mess with me. And obviously it's not because it means anything to her, because she wasn't close with Finn. This doesn't make any sense."

Emma shrugged. "Maybe it wasn't Sue?" she suggested. "Maybe it was one of the kids. They all miss Finn, and any one of them could have had their own reasons for wanting his jacket."

Will shook his head. "No, it couldn't be," he said. "None of them even knew I had it. Even if one of them was inclined to steal it, they'd have no reason to look for it here."

Emma hummed thoughtfully, nodding in agreement as she considered that angle. "And I don't suppose there's any way someone could have found it by accident," she murmured to herself, thinking aloud.

Will huffed out a bitter laugh. "Yeah. In the chest, under your grandma's blanket?" he replied dryly, and he shook his head. "No, definitely not. Not unless they randomly snuck away from the party to rifle through our things. And who would do a thing like that?"

* * *

It was late when Kurt finally got home from Ohio on Sunday night. He knew he could have gotten an earlier flight, but he had wanted to spend as much time with his family as possible before having to return to New York. It was their first Thanksgiving without Finn, and they had all needed each other's support to get through it.

Fortunately, though, it hadn't been as hard as Kurt had initially expected it to be; Uncle Andy had taken it upon himself to ease the grieving family into the holiday season by putting together a big potluck dinner at his home in Findlay, and he had also invited Carole's sister and anyone from the Hudson and Hummel sides of the family who wanted to come. It had been a day filled with both laughter and tears, as relatives from all four sides of their family had forgone their usual traditions to come together and bring some joy to what would otherwise have been a very dismal day for Burt, Carole, and Kurt.

Kurt had spent the rest of the weekend in Lima, mostly at home with his parents, but he had also taken the time to visit some of his old friends from school and the garage. Now he was back in New York, a day later than his roommates, and ready to fall back into his usual routine of work, school, and band practice.

The loft was quiet; the curtain around the girls' section had been drawn for the night, and the only light in the room was coming from the star-shaped marquee between the two makeshift bedrooms. Taking care not to make any noise lest he disturb his roommates, Kurt made his way over to his corner of the room to drop off his luggage and then get ready for bed.

Kurt pulled back the curtain and started to enter his sanctuary, but he stopped short just inside, drawing in a soft gasp at the sight before him and almost dropping his suitcase.

Someone had taken Bruce out of his box and propped him up against Kurt's headboard, between his two normal-shaped pillows, but that wasn't what had caused Kurt to freeze; hanging loosely over Bruce was a familiar red and yellow McKinley letter jacket—one Kurt had thought he would never see again.

Kurt started forward carefully, as though moving too suddenly might make it disappear, and when he reached his bedside, he slowly lifted the bedecked boyfriend pillow, eyeing the jacket on it in astonishment. It really was Finn's. There was still a dark smudge on the inside of the collar from Finn's zombie makeup, despite the detailed instructions Kurt had given him on how to wash it out, which had been blatantly ignored. And, Kurt found as he brushed his hand over the M, he could still feel where the stitching was tighter from the time Finn had brought it to him to mend after he had gotten caught on a fence on some foolhardy adventure with Puckerman.

The memory of the look on Finn's face when Kurt had returned it to him, as good as new, and of the way he had given his hair a grateful tousle, commenting that he was "like, a miracle worker, dude!" flashed across Kurt's mind, causing an unexpected surge of emotion to bubble up inside him.

His breathing shallowed as his eyes darted back and forth across the jacket, trying to make sense of how it could really be here. He was so caught up in the wonder of it all that he didn't notice that he was no longer alone.

"I see you've found the jacket," a voice said, catching Kurt's attention and causing him to turn around.

There was Santana, wide awake and standing just inside the entryway to Kurt's side of the room, her arms crossed casually in front of her.

"I thought about leaving it on a hanger," she went on, stepping farther into the enclosure while Kurt just stared at her, "but then I had this vivid vision of you and Berry going all Mommie Dearest on me, and thought Box-Spring-steen there was a better choice."

"Santana," Kurt said dazedly, his voice quiet and a little rough, "where did you find this?"

"It was in a chest in Mr. Schue's house," Santana replied.

Kurt just stared blankly at her, still too stunned to register much of what she was saying.

When he didn't say anything in response, she explained simply, "I went through his stuff."

Kurt came out of his stupor long enough to give his friend a reproachful look. "You have really got to stop doing that," he said.

Santana spread her hands unyieldingly. "I am who I am, and I'm not changing."

It was a weak excuse for disregarding boundaries, but right now Kurt was too mystified to argue.

"Wait, I don't understand," he said, his brow furrowing. "What was it doing in his house?"

Santana shrugged. "Maybe Puck's conscience finally got to him and didn't have the guts to return it to me himself, so he passed it along to him," she suggested. "Or maybe he never had it, and Mr. Schue was the real thief all along."

Kurt let out a scoff of a laugh. "No way," he said, shaking his head. "Mr. Schue? Stealing Finn's jacket and letting Puck take the fall for it? That's crazy. He wouldn't." But the idea sounded less and less absurd the deeper that it sank in, and after a moment of consideration, he muttered to himself, "He might."

"Maybe," Santana said with a flippant side-nod. "The fact is, I have no idea how it could have ended up with him. I'll have to hit up Sue for surveillance footage from the school next time I'm in town so I can properly unleash the wrath of Snix on whoever stole it from me, former teacher or not. Anyone else I plan to just verbally rip to shreds and then kick the crap out of, but if Mr. Schue seriously stole that jacket from me and then _lied_ to my face about it, I fortunately happen to have a video of him doing the most charming rendition of _Heartless_ that I'm sure the world is just _dying_ to see and ridicule mercilessly. But, that's another task for another day. What matters now is that the sisterhood of the traveling letterman has finally come to a close, and it's back where it belongs." She gestured toward Kurt as she spoke. "In your pallid, freakishly soft hands."

There were so many statements in that spout of words that Kurt wanted to call into question, and he didn't know where to start. But amid the swirl of his bewildered thoughts, somehow only one detail stuck out enough for him to find his voice to address, and that was the fact that Santana seemed to believe the jacket still belonged to him.

"But I gave it to _you_," he said earnestly. "It wasn't a loan; I gave it to you to keep."

The look in Santana's eyes softened a little, and for a moment, all traces of sarcasm fell away. "I know," she said, shifting a little from one foot to the other and trying to look indifferent as her voice took on an unusually gentle tone. "And it really meant a lot to me that you did. But he was _your_ brother. As much as I love having a tangible reminder of what Finn meant to all of us, I know this jacket holds more value to you than it does for me—or anyone—so I'm giving it back." Giving Kurt a meaningful look, she added, "It's rightfully yours; we both know it."

Kurt gaped at her, his eyes beginning to well with tears. He didn't know what to say.

"I…I can't—" he tried, only to be cut off before he could think of how to complete the sentence.

"Of course you can, Hummel. You haven't released your death grip on that thing since I got here."

Kurt was _not_ holding the jacket in a death grip. Well, he _was_, perhaps, holding it like someone might snatch it away from him at any moment if he let his guard down. But he didn't point out that distinction to Santana, as he was too taken aback to argue with her.

He just couldn't believe it. She was really serious about this. He felt he ought to say something to her—thank her, tell her how much he appreciated the gift, protest some more and insist she keep it, _something_—but the lump in his throat was making that impossible to do without falling apart completely.

Not knowing what else to do, he just offered Santana a grateful smile, hoping she would understand its meaning while he worked to get his composure under control so he could find his voice again.

Santana's eyes started to glisten, and she returned his smile, a little tighter perhaps, but with no less sincerity or warmth. And there was something else in her expression, too; a little hint of wistfulness that Kurt didn't know quite how to interpret. She looked almost longing, like there was something she was holding herself back from, and Kurt wondered momentarily if she was beginning to regret giving up the jacket—but it wasn't the jacket that her gaze was directed at.

Whatever it was, her unexpected display of generosity was genuine, and impeccably timed. Kurt's grief over Finn had been just beginning to get more bearable, and then the holiday season had rolled around, reminding him just how much in his life was missing without Finn, and making the pain of loss fresh again. The return of a sentimental keepsake was just what he hadn't known he'd needed.

A strange but nice feeling filled the atmosphere as Kurt and Santana continued to stand together in silence. Even though Kurt had no idea what was going on in Santana's mind, and he couldn't come up with the words to say what he was feeling, he felt more deeply connected to her now than he ever had before.

The moment ended when Santana took a deep breath, looking as though her little heartfelt speech had taken a lot out of her, and then she reclaimed her usual hard, apathetic expression, eyes dark and dull. "Well, I'm gonna head to bed now," she said casually, as though nothing meaningful had just happened. "I just wanted to make sure you got your jacket. Wear that out in public, and people might just believe you now when you tell them you used to be a kicker. Because let's face it, Mister Prissypants, even _I_ don't believe that story about you scoring the winning goal, and I was there. Although the fact that Finn was like twice your size will probably just make people think you stole it."

Santana's contemptuous act was so artfully executed that Kurt almost believed it, but he had already seen the look on her face a moment ago, and he could recognize her sarcasm now for what it was: a defense mechanism against her emotions, and a means of distracting him from her vulnerability. He knew she was uncomfortable with letting him see her softer side; that was why he had given her the jacket in the first place, since it had been the only way he could comfort her without making her feel embarrassed.

And, he realized, that was the same reason she was returning it to him now; she _knew_. Finn's passing didn't affect how she spent her holidays, but she knew that it left a gaping void in Kurt's that could never be filled, and she had no other way of showing support that wouldn't be too much of an emotional upheaval for her. Just like his dad holding his hand, Mercedes singing what she thought he needed to hear, and Rachel telling him he was the only member of the glee club to match her talent level (and pretending she didn't say the same thing to Finn, Mercedes, and Santana), giving Kurt the jacket was just Santana's way of showing that she knew that he was hurting, and she cared.

Now that Kurt thought about it, he could see the pattern in his friendship with Santana. She was, in fact, much more considerate and kindhearted than most people thought, as he had come to learn firsthand—it's just that every act of kindness was carefully packaged with sarcastic comments, and neatly tied off with a jab at him that was meant to irritate but not wound. No matter how much she tried to hide it, though, she wasn't really the unfeeling bitch she pretended to be. She _did_ have a heart; Kurt had lived with her long enough to know that by now.

Kurt evaluated his friend, chewing his lower lip contemplatively. _Maybe…_ he thought. Maybe now they were close enough that he could show her that she didn't have to hide behind insults and dry humor—that she could just be _nice_ and upfront about her feelings, and he wouldn't make fun of her or think less of her for it.

"Santana," he started softly, but Santana held up a hand to silence him.

"Don't," she said shortly. "That soppy-eyed look on your face is all the sentimentality I can take right now. And if you even think about busting out some saccharine Broadway ballad, I'm going to puke. Let's just get on with our lives and not make a federal case out of this, Hummel."

Kurt let out a huff, trying halfheartedly to look offended to let Santana think she was saving face. So maybe she wasn't ready to let go of her pretenses around him after all. Maybe Brittany was the only person she allowed behind those protective walls. But, Kurt decided, that was okay. Disappointed though he was that she still didn't trust him enough to let him in, he could accept that he would just have to meet her where she was.

It did not escape his notice, however, that she had called him by his last name without the title she usually prefixed it with. So, maybe they weren't as close as he liked to think they were, but maybe they were getting there after all.

"Thank you," Kurt said simply, his mind made up not to make Santana uncomfortable, but unable to let the moment go without at least saying _something_. "It really means a lot to me."

Santana's smile returned, and she seemed to relax a little. "You're welcome," she replied. Then she gave him a light punch on the arm. "Now get some sleep. You're gonna need your beauty rest to face your crazy acting coach tomorrow."

"Okay," Kurt laughed softly as she turned to leave. Watching her walk away, he added, "Goodnight, Santana."

Santana paused in the entryway of Kurt's side of the room, and she turned her head and gave him a grin over her shoulder. "Goodnight, Kurt," she returned. Then she continued on her way, closing the curtain behind her, her footsteps fading into silence as she returned to the compartment she shared with Rachel.

Alone again, Kurt turned his attention back to Finn's letterman. He should hang it up, he thought, and in the back of his mind, he saw himself going through the motions of taking it off of Bruce and slipping it onto one of his spare hangers to hang it on his clothing rack alongside his other jackets. But he delayed giving action to the thought, wanting to just savor the moment a while longer. Even though he could see it in front of him and he was holding it in his hands, he still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that the jacket had been given back to him. It had pained him to part with it all those months ago, but he had known that it would be safe with Santana. When he'd found out it had been stolen, it had hit him like a sucker punch straight to his heart, and it had felt as if, in some small way, he had lost Finn all over again. He knew it was just an unremarkable article of clothing thats disappearance could no more take his memories of Finn away than its return could bring him back to life, but having it near still meant something to him.

Kurt held the jacket up higher and pulled it closer toward him, giving it a curious sniff. It smelled like a mixture of the Schuesters' house and Santana's perfume, but beneath that, there was still a lingering scent that was distinctly Finn's. Kurt zoned in on that scent, remembering what it was like to be standing next to Finn, to look up at him and see the way his eyes shifted in confusion when Kurt referenced an old movie he had never seen, or made a sarcastic joke that went over his head. He remembered Finn's slightly crooked smile, the way he got all goofy and energetic when he was excited, and the way he stooped when he hugged Kurt, and never too tightly, always careful not to let their height difference cause any discomfort for him.

Kurt took in a quick, shaky gasp of air, suddenly finding it hard to breathe as the lump in his throat grew bigger by the second. He swallowed and then gasped again, unable to shut out how badly he wished he could hug Finn again, and laugh with him, sing with him, and tell him how much he loved him and how much he missed him. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't stop the sob that slipped out, and he let go of his resolve and gave in to his emotions.

Closing his eyes as his tears began to fall, Kurt hugged the jacket to his chest, burying his face in the shoulder and letting himself be swept up in the scent and all the memories it brought back. And as the motion caused Bruce's one arm to flop forward and curve around Kurt, for just a second, it felt like Finn was hugging him back.


End file.
